So, Björn Söder (SD) has caused hysteria in the media again by saying that Jews and Sami are distinct ethnic groups. Well, if they're not distinct groups why do they need their own schools? Why is them being distinct groups something to be angry about anyway? I thought we were all about "diversity".

SD: 25-30 %.Social Democrats: 20-25 %Moderates: 15-20 %Centre: 10 %Left: 10 %Greens, Liberals and Christian Democrats all get <4 % and thus drop out of the parliament.The Feminists don't reach the 4 % threshold either. AfS will barely miss it as well.No other minor party has a chance this time.

The only plausible majority governments would be:SD+ModeratesSD+SocDemsorSocDems+Centre+Left (the Centre Party would thus have to abandon their neoliberal economic ideology, or the Left Party would have to support a centre-right government, it would be an unstable government).

The other possibility is that either the SocDems or the Moderates form a minority government while the "opposition" lay down their votes, just to keep SD from getting any power, like they have done for the last 4 years. People have already woken up to the fact that this is a travesty of democracy though. All surveys show that the majority wants SD as part of a coalition.

What an interesting thread, extremely useful insight into Swedish politics. I like to think I have a reasonable knowledge of domestic politics in other European countries and Sweden has always been of interest. In the mid-2000 the policies of Fredrik Reinfeldt and his success in gaining power in 2006 were of interest as David Cameron began his modernising process of the Conservative Party in the UK and through the rest of the decade the Moderates were typically hailed as an example of successfully moving towards the centre as a means for a “conservative” party to regain power.

However, both Sweden and the UK suffered the same issue in that as the primary centre-right party moved into government, it created space on the right for “populist” parties to emerge with the SD entering the Riksdag and UKIP becoming a pressure group dragging the Tories to the right and leading to Cameron committing to a referendum on EU membership.

Interestingly with the SD I remember that the British National Party focused on them as an example of a successful far-right party in slowly building support. The BNP certainly managed this with European elections, getting 2 MEPs in 2009 and for a time achieved some success in locals, even achieving over 560,000 votes in the 2010 election (interestingly after the Conservatives, the BNP achieved the second highest increase in share of the vote in 2010). However the SD have gone from strength to strength, whereas the BNP have effectively disappeared.

I’m intrigued that Ulf Kristersson has shut the door on cooperation with the SD. I had thought that the lesson from the Netherlands (with the PVV 2010-2012) and Austria (FPO 1999-2002) was to bring the right-wing populists into government and then see them crack under the pressure. I notice that similarly the FPO have decreased slightly in opinion polling since joining government last year. The difficulty with having the SD and parties such as AfD in permanent opposition is that they tend to become the focus of “none of the above” voters, increasing their share of the vote, making it harder for governments to be formed without resorting to grand coalitions, creating a vicious cycle which drives voters to the extremes as the centrist parties begin to resemble one another more and more.

It is difficult to know what the trick is to defeat populist parties. In the UK it has taken the dramatic effects of a leave vote in the referendum and Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party to break UKIP support. I wonder where UKIP would be if there had been a Remain vote and Corbyn had eventually been replaced as Labour leader?

@ReformedEndralonSorry mate, but your analysis misses the mark by a mile.SD did not start to grow in some vacuum left by the Moderates as the latter moved to the centre*. The old Moderate party was all about cutting taxes for the upper and upper-middle classes (their precursor the Right Party was a true traditional conservative party that cared about family, crown and fatherland, but that was a long time ago). SDs entire raison d'être on the other hand is stopping mass immigration from the third world, and they have pulled voters from the entire political spectrum united over this one issue. Why? Because immigration is a black hole (no pun intended) gobbling up all our resources. This means worse infrastructure and public services for everyone while the tax burden gets ever more suffocating, so all classes are hurt, but especially the working class and the middle class.

You are also wrong about the FPÖ. The FPÖ did lose a lot of votes after being in a government coalition in 1999-2002, but it's now back to the same level of popularity again. Furthermore they were in government aldready back in 1983 and it was after that that they really started to become big in the first place. There is no statistical trend here. It's fairly normal for all parties in government to lose some popularity compared to before the election. Comparing FPÖ to UKIP or SD is nonsense anyway since they are not some young upstart party - they've been around since the 50s.For an example of "populism" in power that shows no signs of "cracking under the pressure" one need not look further than Fidesz in Hungary. Also consider Denmark where the Danish People's Party has been so successful that all the mainstream parties have adopted their politics and are now arguably more "xenophobic" than SD.

You are right in one thing. SD will be under a lot of pressure once in government, because as I said, immigration is the one single issue holding the party together. What I, and most SD-supporters, hope is that SD will get into power (directly or indirectly) and do what the DPP did in Denmark. I couldn't care less about the future of the party itself. A party is only a means to an end, and in SD's case that is stopping mass immigration. Once that is accomplished SD is superfluous unless it reinvents itself - they have sort-of started to do this by embracing social conservatism in their latest manifesto.

Actually, SD has potential to do what the DPP did but even more thoroughly. Swedish people are very hive-minded which is why political correctness has been so suffocating here, but this also means that once the pendulum finally swings in the other direction, "everyone" will turn 180 degrees in perfect uniformity, and the fact that for the last decades we were doing the opposite thing will disappear down the collective memory hole. Debate is the exception in Sweden and consensus is the default, we are merely going through a transitional phase from one consensus to another. From fanatic multiculturalism and ethnomasochism to fanatic nationalism.This is a kind-of creepy aspect of the Swedish Volksgeist.

*There is actually another, as of yet very small party, that better fits that description: Medborgerlig samling.

So it has once again been revealed that so-called "refugees" are regularly going on "vacation" to the country they supposedly "flead" from, all the while living a leisurely life at the Swedish tax-payers' expense. This time it concerns Syrians.Why are we morally obligated to house and feed these scumbags again?

This would be a perfect occasion for SD to step up their game and push for repatriation policies, but instead they have chosen to abandon that altogether, saying (literally translated) "Nobody who has lived in Sweden will be forced to leave". Great way to piss on your own voters in a futile attempt to get cozy with the establishment, SD!

Hopefully, AfS can grab this opportunity to "convert" people.

Edit: Oh, and on Poland sending aid to us to solve the wildfire crisis, they said "We do it to help the Swedish people, we do not do it to help the Swedish government". Gotta give the Poles a thumbs up for that statement!